Owen Roberts

[INT]

Owen Roberts is a composer and musician holding a degree in Composition from the University of Oxford. Active in the improvisational music scene, Roberts has participated in a range of performances, installations, and artistic collaborations in Berlin and throughout Europe, and has served as director of music programming for Berlin-based Mindpirates e.V. A solo electroacoustic LP and a double live LP with Raz O’hara are scheduled for release in 2014.

As a recipient of the 2013 Berlin Current artistic commission, Roberts' project, Recycled Hyperprism Plastik for Amplified Chamber Ensemble, was presented at CTM 2014. The piece was inspired by Edgard Varèse’s 1922/23 Hyperprism, which was written as a response to the new electronic world in which the composer lived. As part of an eight-piece ensemble, Roberts aimed to extend Varèse’s groundbreaking musical language into 2013 not by arranging techno for orchestral instruments, but by embracing the outer limits of acoustic instruments’ percussive, timbral and textural possibilities to create a relevant form of physical, instrumental techno, opening a dialogue between modern electronic music and its Western musical influences.